Chilled beverages, in cans, bottles or other containers, are often sold at convenience stores and grocery stores. Beverage containers are typically placed inside a refrigerator for cooling, prior to purchase by a customer. Conventional refrigerators cool an interior of a chamber using a vapor-compression cycle, whereby a fan blows air across an evaporator coil to provide convective cooling of the interior of the chamber. Beverage containers may be placed in the chamber and, over time, the beverages may become cooled. When starting with a typical chamber full of cans or bottles of beverages at room temperature, for example in a warm climate, the time required for the beverages to reach a desirable chilled temperature may be ten hours or more.
This is particularly troublesome in locations where electricity may be inconsistently available. In these locations, a conventional refrigerator may not have a supply of electricity for a period of time sufficient to cool the interior chamber and any beverages inside. This leads to a poor consumer experience because the beverages may never reach a preferred chilled temperature.
In some locations, electricity may be expensive such that vendors may prefer not to run a refrigerator during hours when their shop is closed. These vendors may unplug their refrigerator, for example, upon closing their shop for the night. When the shop opens in the morning, the refrigerator may be plugged back in, but the contents of the refrigerator may not become cool before purchased by a consumer, thereby providing a poor consumer experience.
In addition, conventional refrigerators cool an interior chamber and its contents, regardless of customer demand for those contents. In periods of low sales, this may result in the needless cooling of beverages.
Therefore, improved systems and methods to address these and other shortcomings in the art are desired.